Why Is Every App Blue? The Science Behind The Colour Of Your Website
It may seem like an arbitrary decision left to web designers, but the colours you choose to code your brand with can make a big impact on conversion. There is an entire field of psychology that revolves around colour preferences and the subsequent emotional reactions, but here are a few simple tips that can help your company use colours to your advantage.
The specific colours you choose are more important that simply for aesthetic purposed. The colours you apply to specific buttons and parts of your page can change the way a customer reacts to your brand. It takes 90 seconds for a customer to form an opinion on a product and by using specific colours you can impact that opinion. Choosing the right colours on your headers, graphics, headline type, borders, backgrounds, buttons and popups is crucial to conversion success.
The most important consideration to make is who your audience is. Bright orange, yellow and green are perfect for company that sells children’s bouncy houses but would be inappropriate for a high fashion website.
For colour, the easiest way to break down your audience is by gender. Women prefer blue, green and purple and primary colours in general, while men prefer blue, green and black colour schemes. Both genders have a general disdain to earth tones like orange and brown. These preferences can be used to inform the base colours of your website.
When considering buttons and features on your website, look at the breakdown of these commonly used colours, the feelings they evoke, and the best place to use them.
BLUE= TRUST, PEACE AND ORDER
There is a reason that many popular apps and websites use blue as their main colour (hello Facebook, Twitter, PayPal and Capital One). Blue projects subtle messages of trustworthiness and serenity, loyalty and tranquilly. Use blue to your advantage on landing pages on your website to make the customer feel comfortable and at peace right away. The only case that you should not use blue for your website, is if your business is related to food. Very few types of food are blue and the colour can send a message of distaste.
YELLOW= WARNING, ANXIETY
This colour can sometimes be associated with happiness or sunshine, but more often it is linked to warning signs (think wet floor and traffic signals). Yellow evokes a heighted sense of emotion or anxiety, so it should never be used as the main colour for the branding scheme of a website. Yellow is best to be used on features like call to action buttons where a bit of anxiety or tension will urge the user to click the button.
GREEN= ENVIRONMENT, OUTDOORS, ACTION
The word green itself is often used as a term to describe environmentally-friendly or outdoors related practices, so using this colour for any business that has to do with nature, the environment, organic products or the outdoors will produce great results. Green is also a great colour to use on Call to Action buttons that says “purchase” or “submit” because it sticks out in isolation against a simpler background. This is common practice for a reason! Besides that, green has been known to boost creativity! Use this colour wisely.
ORANGE= FUN, CONFIDENCE, URGENCY
This colour is great to encourage physical activity, competition and confidence, which is why it is often used in many sports team’s logos. The colour suggestion of activity explains why many companies use the colour for “Limited time offer” banners, as it stimulates attention. However, beware that some people can interpret orange as signifying “cheap”, which is appropriate for a promoting a sale, but not for a luxury high value website.
BLACK= LUXURY, VALUE
This is a very commonly used colour that signifies luxury, elegance, sophistication and power. Black is a classic and timeless colour that gives the impression of exclusivity and importance. Many high value companies like Louis Vuitton and Lamborghini use this colour to add intensity to their websites.
BRIGHT COLOURS= CALL TO ACTION
The brighter the colour on you call to action button, the higher conversion rate. In particular red, green, orange and yellow are the most effective, but as long as it is bright, the call to action will be more successful than if was in a darker, cooler colour. Anti-aesthetic colours tend to perform well as they are different and catch the eye against your coordinated aesthetic.
WHITE= FREEDOM, SPACIOUSNESS, BREATHEABLILITY
Though not technically a colour, white can often be neglected when considering a colour scheme for a website. The simplicity can be a powerful design feature when used a background colour. It lets your text and buttons standout and gives users a sense of freedom and peace in their experience.
The most important thing to remember when you are creating a website is to test a variety of colour combinations with your audience. Use this guide to inform your colour choices, but only through testing will you know exactly what works for you.
If you already have a website and brand that prevents your company from making dramatic changes to your colour scheme, try to at least adjust the call to action buttons. Small changes in specific places can still have big impacts on overall conversion.
Having a deliberate plan with your use of colour can have a big impact on the overall performance of your website!
Six Reasons Why Content Marketing is Essential for Digital Growth
Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action by changing or enhancing consumer behavior.
Joe Pulizzi
It is almost 2017, and if you are not incorporating digital marketing strategies into your traditional customer acquisition and marketing plans, you are falling behind. But why is including digital content so important and how do you get started? Find out why this method keeps you ahead of your competitors online.
It is becoming difficult to find anyone who does not have some form of social media. To ignore this easily accessible market is to loose a great opportunity for direct contact and feedback from loyal customers and potential clients.
Plain and simple, content marketing just works. It increases sales, provides costs savings and develops quality customers who have brand loyalty. When you create relevant content that focuses on what an audience is interested you are rewarded with customer retention and loyalty.
Here are 6 reasons why content marketing is essential for digital growth:
Let Content Tell your Story
Content provides a convenient and creative means to tell the story of your brand. Whether you post a blog, video, photo, interview, or podcast, this content gives the customer a window into the details of your company, and the causes you care about! When a customer knows your story, they become warm to your business and are more likely to invest in your product or service. When people get to see the personal touches of your story they are more likely to be empathetic and compassionate to your brand.
Add Value at Every Step of the Sales Funnel
The purpose of content marketing is to add value beyond just your product or service. Creative digital content can target the needs and concerns, challenges and pain points that a customer would feel throughout every part of their purchasing process.
Consider this example. A company that makes baby bedding could make a post with ideas about what to put in their new child’s nursery. Though this post does pitch the product of the bedding company, it still addresses a great concern that a new mother might be having. When you post content that is about subjects that surround your brand, you can appeal to a broader group of people. Even though they may not have been looking to buy your product initially, when they are introduced, entertained or informed by your content they are more likely to consider your brand. Content like this can answer questions that people don’t even know how to articulate!
Content Creates Relationships with Consumers
One of the greatest features of digital content is that is provides an easy avenue for customer engagement. When you are posting valuable and relevant content that customers consistently engage with, you create a community of loyal followers. This relationship is beneficial for both parties. Customers return for material that appeals to their needs and desires and you are there to provide them with the critical information that informs their purchasing decisions. This warm audience feels loyal to your brand and will come back time and again for your relevant content!
Own Your Material
In traditional advertising and marketing, the campaigns you wanted to show to your audience had to be presented through a third- party media such as TV or radio. With digital marketing, you are able to own and control the space that presents your message. Without interrupting or having to buy an audience, you can bring customers straight to your website. You are the one who creates the content, and you are the one who benefits from the direct contact your audience with your website. Content marketing is about attracting an audience to an experience that you own, build and optimize. In content marketing the brand owns the media!
Leverage Social Media
It may seem obvious, but every digital marketing campaign must include social media. Social media provides a built in pre-existing audience, and provides a way for brands to keep directly in contact with their audience. You can use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ to amplify your creative content and reach massive amounts of potential customers. The more engagement you have with your most, the more successful your pages will be, so providing your followers with quality relevant content will only improve your brand. Social media is an excellent distributor for content and is vital to the success of your content marketing efforts.
Increase Your SEO Ranking
Great content that appeals to your audience contributes to a better ranking within Google. As Google continues to update their algorithms, it has become more and more clear that quality content means high rankings. When users interact and engage with your material, you build more social clout which increases your position. Social clout, quality back links and quantity of shares are all considered by Google when determining a website ranking. By incorporating relevant content that appeals to your audience, you will increase your overall rank on Google.
People are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages a day. If you provide quality content, customers feel refreshed by the break to their saturated email inboxes, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds.
People know when they are being sold to and have a greater appreciation and affinity to good creative, entertaining or informative content. In the long run, content marketing creates more loyal and quality customers who appreciate your content as much as you appreciate their purchases.
Think of it this way. What if your customers look forward to receiving your marketing? What if they are eager to share the advice with friends and spend time absorbing the content?
Copyright: ellagrin / 123RF Stock Photo
Lost in SEO? Local SEO vs. Organic SEO
Different types of SEO work for different people. Some businesses flourish with Organic SEO, while others benefit more from geographically-targeted Local SEO. Search engines are constantly evolving. If you want to keep traffic flowing, your website has to keep up with them.
Google’s search algorithm aims to get users the best results for their searches. Search engine optimization harnesses that algorithm to increase your traffic, provide the best user experience, and make you money. This is a bit of a breakdown to help you figure out which kind of SEO can work best for you.
What is Organic SEO?
You’ve got a great website. Now, you need to get noticed.
That’s where Organic SEO comes in.
Organic SEO boosts your site’s ranking in the organic search engine results. This is done by making it clear to Google what your site is about. When you search for something, you get results based on quality and relevance. The algorithm picks out the highest-quality content relevant to your search terms. Only sites that have valuable, trusted content rank in organic search results.
In other words, to improve your site’s ranking, you have to show Google that your site:
- Is relevant to the keyword.
- Has good content.
Organic SEO optimization makes your site search engine-friendly. Trusted content, high quality links, and on and off-page optimization strategies work together to climb the rankings. When Google knows you’re the real deal, your rank improves. This opens the floodgates for traffic to flow onto your site. And as you build trust with your users, your ranking will last longer.
What is Local SEO?
You know your customers – it’s time for them to get to know you.
Local SEO helps you rise above the local competition.
Local SEO boosts your site’s ranking for geographically-related keywords. A geo-targeted search term is one that includes a location. When someone searches for a geo-targeted term, the results favor sites with trusted locations. In service industries many potential customers will include a location with their search. For example, someone might search “car repair in Toronto.” If you’re in Toronto and Google knows that, you’ll rank higher than a repair shop in Ottawa, and will even rank higher than other Toronto repair shops that Google can’t pin on a map.
To be a trusted location, you have to show Google that your business:
- Is relevant to the keyword.
- Exists at a specific geographical location.
As a trusted location, your site will organically rise to the top and stand out in local search results. Local SEO can make you the number one result for relevant searches in your area, bringing more traffic your site. And more traffic means more business.
Which One Is Right for Me?
Local and Organic SEO techniques both bolster your rank in organic search results so you can reach as many customers as possible. The best choice for you depends on your business and your target customers.
Local SEO gets you ranked in a specific location. It works best for small or local businesses. If you’re targeting customers in a specific area, Local SEO will get you top results.
Organic SEO is all about your website. You don’t need a physical, brick-and-mortar location to use Organic SEO. If getting traffic to your site is your primary goal, Organic SEO is the way to go. And for Internet-only businesses, Organic SEO is essential.
Are you ready to achieve your traffic goals? Drop us a line and start growing your customer base today.